About the Author

Mike Davis

(19462022) was the author ofCity of Quartzas well asDead CitiesandThe Monster at Our Door, co-editor ofEvil Paradises, and co-editor-with Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller-ofUnder the Perfect Sun(The New Press).

Daniel Bertrand Monk is the director of the Peace Studies Program at Colgate University and the author of An Aesthetic Occupation. He lives in Hamilton, New York.

Reviews

In the evil paradises of this uneven anthology edited by scholars Davis and Monk, the free market coddles the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. With contributions from academics, architects and journalists, the essays explore how cities like Beijing and Johannesburg disregard good governance for prestige projects adored by the nomadic business elite. Though the message is consistent, the tone wanders from a fun and flimsy piece on Orange County by journalist Rebecca Schoenkopf to history professor Jon Wiener's overly somber look at Ted Turner's two million-acre landholding. In one essay, Davis launches a salvo at Dubai, distilling the glittering emirate into "Milton Friedman's Beach Club," powered by the labor of imported near-slaves. California-style gated housing developments are a recurring theme, popping up in Iran and Hong Kong. More original is science fiction novelist China Mieville's brilliant essay "Floating Utopias" about a seafaring metropolis and tax haven to dwarf the largest ocean liner. The catch? This libertarian dream project will probably never be built because that philosophy, Mieville explains, is for people "too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected" to avoid taxes or, for that matter, to build a boat equipped with an airport. Even when it's not so pithy, this leftist world tour reminds us of development's human cost. (July) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.